Take a Walk Through a Decade of iTunes

This month the iTunes Music Store turns ten, and to celebrate Apple put together a mini-site in iTunes showing how the store helped change the music industry.

The Decade of iTunes site breaks down every year of the iTunes Music Store in detail. The timeline starts off on April 28, 2003 when the store first launched on the. On the first day “Stuck In A Moment” by U2 was the top-selling $0.99 song, and Beck’s “Sea Change” was the best-selling album. Within just the first week Apple managed to sell more than 1 million songs.

Apple announced third-generation iPod on the same day. It was the first iPod to feature capacitive buttons, and the first one to work with Windows PCs.

Later, in October 2003 the first of the iconic silhouette iPod + iTunes ads aired on TV and Apple released the first version of iTunes for Windows.

Following years contain more details as Apple brought the store to more countries and expanded its iPod lineup. Users can see what songs and albums sold best each year (spoiler: it’s a lot U2, Coldplay, Adele and other various pop artists).

Apple’s lists milestones start to grow longer in 2007 when the company debuted the first iPhone. Each subsequent year saw a number of new products released as well as new items added to the iTunes Store.

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While the store started as a way to get DRM-laden music for the iPod it eventually grew to include audiobooks, movies, TV shows, ebooks, podcasts, educational lectures and,of course, apps. Though apps didn’t reach iTunes until 2008, users download far more apps than songs from Apple’s store.

The iTunes store is an essential part of Apple’s iOS and OS X ecosystem, and it’s nice to go back and see just how it evolved over time. The milestones lack context of what else was happening in the app, music, media and book industries the store covers, but it’s interesting nonetheless.